Tag Archives: body

Chuck’s Place: Calmness Begins In The Breath

“Digestion begins in the mouth! Digestion begins in the mouth! Digestion begins in the mouth!”

That was Jan’s 5 am recapitulation of a third grade memorization at St. Mary’s, sixty children loudly responding to the question from their teacher-nun, “Where does digestion begin?”

What prompted this discussion was an effort we’ve been making to memorize an affirmation that Robert Monroe had formulated for safe out-of-body travel. It’s been a long time since either of us has taken up the task of memorization! Of course, shortly after that discussion we encountered that affirmation again in our morning reading. A specific portion of it was cited as being essential for out-of-body practitioners to enter a whole new dimension of exploration!

Breathe deeply and stillness will come... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Breathe deeply and stillness will come…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Simultaneously, I was drawn back to Swami Vishnudevananda’s classic book, The Illustrated Book of Yoga, where I remembered having read about the very specific relationship between the breath and the mind. In a nutshell, I’ve come to the distilled proof: You can’t breathe and think at the same time!

Obviously, this “proof” is not completely true. We don’t completely cut off respiration when we think, but concentrated thinking does significantly slow, and sometimes halt, respiration for significant periods of time.

This proof can easily be tested. Take a moment and purposely and intensively focus your attention on any sound in your environment. Notice what happens to your breathing as you do so. My experience is that my breathing slows down or pauses as I concentrate on the sound.

The same relationship with our breath holds true when our mind becomes attached and preoccupied with a thought; breathing slows down or is halted for a period of time. Therefore, if you want to shift yourself away from a burgeoning thought fixation, turn your attention to breathing. Take in a slow deep breath. Do several of these slow deep breaths and you will break the fixation of the mind on its thoughts and feel revitalized within your physical body in the bargain!

As I see it, the mind is a separate body from the physical body. The mind, or mental body, actually resides in the energy body, a body separate and distinct from the physical body. When people say they have been out-of-body during waking life, off daydreaming perhaps, it generally means that their mind, or mental body, had scooted away from the physical body and gone off with the vital energy the body takes in when we breathe, what the yogis call prana. While the mind concentrates, consciously or unconsciously, on its thoughts, the body is shortchanged of its normal intake of oxygen, diminishing the vital energy of life as it is completely monopolized by the mind.

The body is often rigid, constricted, tense and immobile during intense preoccupation with thought. If the body is simultaneously in motion, it operates like a plane without a pilot, subject to collision and injury, much like the Absentminded Professor!

Actually, the mind does often utilize the physical brain when it thinks, which is why overthinking generally causes overheated brain circuits and headaches. The mind does not need the brain to function as is evident in out-of-body exploration when the energy body journeys beyond the body and uses the mind quite naturally to navigate its course. However, we can be in the physical body using the mind/brain connection and still be cut off from, or beyond connection with, the physical body.

Ahhh...fresh as a beautiful bed of flowers! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ahhh…fresh as a beautiful bed of flowers!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

When the mind is intentionally directed to the breath, however, the prana or life energy it has monopolized is dispersed throughout the body, in each conscious breath, reducing the anxious concentration of energy in the mental body, a frequent generator of high anxiety. So, as is highly recommended for all cases of anxiety, breathe and become calm!

And so, taking a tip from Jan’s childhood memory: Calmness begins in the breath! Calmness begins in the breath! Calmness begins in the breath! Perhaps the nuns of St. Mary’s might give that chant their stamp of approval!

Deeply breathing,
Chuck

Message for Humanity from Jeanne: Your Body Has The Answer

Lost in the vast ocean of information? Well, you always have you! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Lost in the vast ocean of information? Well, you always have you!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In this week’s channeled message Jeanne invites us into our own body world, to discover all that we need. We are enough! All the answers lie within! Haven’t we heard that before? You bet! It’s the eternal challenge. With a new perspective, such as Jeanne offers, you just might get something new out of the practice, as you turn inward today.

Look for our other blogpostings and Soulbytes during the week as we explore the energy of this particular week and share what we discover. And good luck with your own explorations, experiences, and inner processes.

Have a great week,
Jan and Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Our Contract With Planet Earth

Our energy selves are in alignment with our mission on Earth... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Our energy selves are in alignment with our mission on Earth…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

When we are born into this world, our energy body self joins with a physical body self as an entwined unit for the duration of our physical lifespan. Though partners in this life, these two bodies are distinct entities that separate daily in the out-of-body explorations of dreaming, or under willed or inadvertent traumatic jolts that cause these two bodies to separate.

The physical body is constructed of the elements of this Earth and has a finite lifespan. The energy body is constructed of finer elements, distinct from earth’s elements, and houses our spirit, that which separates and ascends at the moment of physical death. This spirit self is the home of consciousness and awareness in our human personality, and though it partners with the human brain in human life, consciousness is separate and distinct from the dense hard drive of the physical brain. This consciousness lives on when the physical body dies, returning to the higher realms from whence it came.

We are indeed beings in this world, but ultimately we are not of this world. We come into this world through the host of a physical body, which we shed upon the death of that body—ashes to ashes, dust to dust—and consciousness, or spirit, lives on. And so, why do we come here?

It is said by the ancients that planet Earth is an “unsacred planet.” (This is not a moral judgment; it’s simply a description of a planet of very dark, dense energy that is engaged in its own process of evolution, so keep in mind that Earth is also a living being, ripe for change.) Evolution is a process of growth that slowly moves toward consciousness as its guiding force. Nature, as depicted by the Garden of Eden, is life devoid of consciousness and choice. For nature to evolve, its consciousness must emerge. We are the light beings, the spirit beings of consciousness, come to partner with the dense energy of earth, charged with advancing its evolution. We are the beings prompted by the kundalini energy, the powerful life-force in us all, to eat from the tree of knowledge and advance the consciousness of earth’s own spiritual development. If you are in this world, you are indeed an advanced spiritual being.

Within the darkness shines always the light... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Within the darkness shines always the light…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Earth is an extremely dense planet, pure nature and, as previously mentioned, devoid of consciousness, unaware of even itself. As we humans continue to live upon this planet we awaken it to its beauty and bestial qualities alike, to its majesty and its destructive powers, giving it conscious awareness of itself. Imagine how many people have stood high upon a dense mountaintop and marveled at the beauty spread out below, exclaiming “How beautiful! How exquisite! How stunning!” Earth hears and awareness of Earth’s natural beauty expands.

Imagine how many times people have exclaimed over the devastation of volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, the power of nature unleashed. “How frightening! How terrible! How destructive!” Earth hears and awareness of Earth’s natural power expands. These are simple examples of how Earth, a living entity, receives consciousness and awareness through our presence. We are all part of a vast interconnected energy, and whether conscious or unconscious, aware or not, we all impact each other and everything else by our thoughts, our ideas, our agreements and our disagreements.

Of course, as it now stands, we have made a mess of things! Perhaps Earth questions its decision to partner with such spirit beings as us! Well, the truth is that consciousness or spirit energy does not guarantee loving compassion and right action. Consciousness can settle in the lower chakras of “me, me, me,” power, domination and exploitation. This is the dark side of the force of consciousness.

The ancient sorcerers and modern power manipulators—spirit beings of the dark side of consciousness—take their journeys in infinity for their own pleasure and power trips. Spirit beings must contend with their own challenges with these tendencies within themselves, as well as with spirit beings outside themselves who seek to dominate this dense energy planet for their own selfish goals. We are all in this together, conscious beings of the light and dark side of the force. We are all also the embodiment of both light and dark energy, both sides of consciousness. It is up to us to determine the path we will take during our lifetime. A path of heart is consciousness seeking what is right.

Ultimately, our energy body selves utilize planet Earth as our own divine playing field, for our own awakening, clarification, and advancement. Eventually, we must all encounter and reconcile with the dark side of our own spiritual nature, and Earth’s energy field offers the perfect density in which to do that. In turn, Earth benefits from this cosmic drama, as our forays into the dense energy of Earth in our physical bodies awakens and enriches Earth with consciousness through the lives we live while we are here. Simply put, the materials we leave behind when we leave contain an awakened consciousness that serves Earth’s evolutionary imperative. The consciousness we take with us serves our own spiritual advancement.

In balance of light and dark we find what we need... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In balance of light and dark we find what we need…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Reincarnation is our continual working project toward spiritual enlightenment, embodying many Earth lifetimes, while also enriching the consciousness of the planet. This joint venture is the ultimate symbiotic partnership, until it consummates in our final separation, in enlightenment, representing the end of our reincarnation cycles: no more compulsory lives in physical form.

Upon enlightenment, our spirit selves choose whether to return to Earth as teachers, to guide Earth from a higher plane, or to move on to new worlds and adventures in infinity, to ever-expanding journeys of consciousness.

We are eternally indebted to planet Earth for offering us the playing field of her physical form for our spiritual advancement. May we pay our debt royally by helping her advance beyond the destructive tendency of the dark side that currently holds her in its grip. May we advance her to the fourth chakra of love and compassion, to the level of the heart, before we fully leave and go on to our own next adventures.

From a path of heart,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Alter In The Body Temple

We all have inherent wisdom within the body temple... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all have inherent wisdom within the body temple…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Deep work on the self is inevitably accompanied by equally deep encounters with anxiety. Heightened anxiety states not only shut down our ability to explore and process our self-discoveries, but often become a major preoccupation, taking most of our energy and attention to manage.

Inherent in our body are physical movements that regulate our anxious states. When we dream our eyes move rapidly back and forth as we put to rest disturbing experiences from our days. This is an unconscious, built-in body movement that regulates our anxiety every day. Without this body processing function, our lives would be overrun by the anxiety of one long run-on sentence without the punctuation of completion and rejuvenation that our daily dreams provide us with.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered, in their dreaming, the Magical Pass of Recapitulation. This pass also involves a back and forth movement, similar to the rapid eye movement of dreaming, though not just of the eyes, but of the entire head. This movement is accompanied by an inhalation and an exhalation as the head sweeps from side to side. Those shamans discovered that those movements could be consciously performed to put troubled life experiences to rest, whereby reducing anxiety through release of energetic attachment to the past.

Francine Shapiro inadvertently discovered the same bilateral mechanism inherent in the body in what has come to be known as EMDR. In EMDR, like in shamanic recapitulation, anxiety is reduced through bilateral movement that enables processing and putting traumatic experiences to rest.

The ancient Hindus discovered many body poses and breathing techniques to master the central nervous system, which manifests anxiety. They came to call these body practices yoga. One such breathing technique is called Nadhi Sadhana or alternate nostril breathing.

In this pranayama exercise, using our right hand, we close off the right nostril with our thumb while breathing in through the left nostril. When the inhalation is complete, we close off the left nostril with the ring finger, in effect gently pinching the nose closed for a brief pause, before lifting the thumb and exhaling through the right nostril. At the completion of the exhalation we inhale through the right nostril, close it off with the thumb, pause for a moment with pinched nose before lifting the ring finger and exhaling through the left nostril. This back and forth breathing practice counts as one complete breath. The sequence is repeated, going back and forth through alternate nostrils.

Jan and I practice this breathing at least twice each day for a total of at least twelve complete breaths. Our personal finding is a significant reduction in anxiety, resulting in a calming of the central nervous system that lasts throughout the day. This yoga breathing activates the inborn automatic bilateral movement of dreaming in a conscious way, offering a high level regulation of anxiety.

We do not recommend this breathing to accompany the processing of memories or trauma, as the recapitulation breath takes care of that. However, it is highly effective, if practiced regularly, to reduce the overall tension and levels of stress in the body. And for that we recommend it.

The body is our temple. Though itself mortal, it houses all that we are and all that we will become beyond our mortal lives. The body as temple houses physical movements that we can consciously access and exercise that greatly support our spiritual journeys, and that prepare us for our ultimate life without a body.

Enter the temple of the body self with reverence for its movement wisdom. This is not a mental process, but a physical doing. Do it, and see what happens!

From the body self,
Chuck